ASEAN Beat | Politics | Southeast Asia

Malaysian King Approves Imprisoned Former PM Najib’s House Arrest Bid

The royal pardon is likely to empower the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and widen the rifts within Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s reformist coalition.

On Friday, Malaysia’s king granted imprisoned former Prime Minister Najib Razak a royal pardon, allowing him to serve the remainder of his prison term under house arrest, prompting an outcry and creating another potential political headache for Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.

Najib, 73, has been imprisoned since August 2022, when Malaysia’s top court upheld a conviction in a case linked to the multi-billion-dollar looting of the state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

In a statement, the government confirmed that Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar had granted Najib a “conditional pardon.” This will allow him to serve the remainder of his prison term under house arrest if he pays a 50 million ringgit fine ($12 million) imposed by the courts. Najib’s sentence expires on August 23, 2028.

The 1MDB state investment fund was established shortly after Najib’s election in 2009. In the ensuing years, Malaysian investigators claim, at least $4.5 billion was drained from the fund and laundered by Najib’s associates through a labyrinth of dummy corporations and bank accounts across the globe. The 1MDB scandal helped bring down Najib’s government at the general election of 2018, and has since led to criminal investigations in a number of other countries, including the United States, Switzerland, and Singapore.

Najib’s original conviction was handed down in 2020, when a court sentenced him to 12 years in prison and fined him 210 million ringgit ($51.5 million) for abuse of power, criminal breach of trust, and money laundering. The charges related to Najib’s illegal receipt of around $10 million from SRC International, a former unit of 1MDB.

Since then, Najib has pursued a range of legal and political tactics in order to reduce his sentence. In early 2024, he succeeded in gaining a royal pardon from Sultan Abdullah Ahmad Shah of Pahang, the country’s previous king, which halved his prison sentence and reduced his fine to 50 million ringgit. He has also mounted a legal bid to serve his sentence under house arrest, claiming that the royal pardon contained a royal “addendum order” that entitled him to serve the remainder of his sentence at ​home. Accusing the authorities of deliberately ignoring or concealing the order, he initiated legal action aiming to compel them to confirm its existence and to execute it. His legal bid was shot down by the Kuala Lumpur High Court in December 2025.

This royal pardon, based on the sweeping powers granted to the king under Malaysia’s constitution, effectively overrides that decision. As the Associated Press noted, the king’s decision “marked an unprecedented use of house arrest as a form of royal clemency in Malaysia and could renew debate over the rule of law and the treatment of Malaysia’s most prominent corruption convict.”

Indeed, much Malaysian social media commentary about the decision has been shot through with a resigned and weary acceptance that the rich and powerful will always manage to evade accountability.

G25, a prominent civil society coalition, said in a statement that it was “deeply shocked and dismayed” by the decision.

“This does nothing to strengthen public confidence in our criminal justice system. It is a travesty of justice,” the group said, adding that it was difficult to reconcile with the government’s stated commitment to strengthening the rule of law and combating corruption.”

Indeed, the decision has placed Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in a tricky position. While he has spent much of his career crusading against corruption, he is currently governing in a marriage-of-convenience coalition with Najib’s party, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the primary component of the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition.

Given the various corruption scandals that have swirled around UMNO and its key figures, this has been a source of growing discontent within Anwar’s Pakatan Harapan (PH) and among its supporters, who argue that the Malaysian leader has been forced to compromise his principles in order to mollify his coalition partner.

This has reached a tipping point over the past year due to a string of........

© The Diplomat